The generation gap between teenagers and their adult mentors cropped up
in many movie variations throughout the decade. Those that commanded more
attention were of the variety exemplified by the two signature James Dean
movies of 1955, East of Eden (a John
Steinbeck adaptation set in an earlier era) and Rebel Without a Cause (a current-day view of rebellious youth
acting out in borderline law-breaking behavior). But the troubles of parents
and children who had grown distant and found it achingly hard to communicate
could manifest themselves in works that spoke in softer, yet no less effective
and compassionate, voices. When one example of the latter variety, 1958’s Blue Denim, co-written by James Leo
Herlihy, a friend of Tennessee Williams, and William Noble, opened on Broadway
on Herlihy’s 31st birthday under Joshua Logan’s delicate direction, it was
welcomed by The New York Times’ Brooks
Atkinson as “a moving play” that, despite a perceived lack of poetic finesse
that might have transcended its more literal style of naturalism, was
“original; in the last act it is overwhelmingly dramatic. It touches on family
relationships that are unseen but deeply felt in a time of crisis.” The crisis
was a pregnancy involving two neighboring teens who in the throes of first love
and their anxiousness to grow up fast engaged in lovemaking with an unintended
consequence. The characters’ dilemma was conveyed with sufficient precision and
sensitivity that the then-taboo word “abortion” went unspoken but nonetheless
remained an option, and audiences could yet perceive the basically caring
instincts of the two families facing the ramifications of an unguarded moment
and being forced out of their generation-based complacency to view each other
in a new light and cross the emotional chasms that had opened up between them.

Hollywood would tackle Blue Denim (1959) the following
year, with tactful revisions implemented: an abortion – the word still not
uttered – could still be considered but ultimately not enacted. Yet the power
of the material still hit home. Veteran director/co-writer Philip Dunne,
adapting the play in collaboration with Edith Sommer (who had penned the play A Roomful of Roses involving parent/teenager
conflicts, adapted into the 1956 film Teenage
Rebel, and would also co-write the screenplay of the 1959 career-women
ensemble drama The Best of Everything, a Twilight Time title), carefully
preserved the tone of disjointed family relationships, powerful romantic
attraction and hard-won understanding without setting up any evocations of
“juvenile delinquency” or “everlasting shame;” this particular “social issue”
problem would be sorrowfully confronted but supportively overcome. Helping to
calibrate Blue Denim’s poignancy on screen were the lead performances of
Brandon de Wilde and Carol Lynley, both 17, as the central couple. De Wilde
spent the decade growing up on screen from The Member of the Wedding (1952,
also a TT title) and Shane (1953)
through Good-bye, My Lady (1956), Night Passage (1957) and The Missouri Traveler (1958); Blue
Denim proved a touchstone career marker alerting us to the assured adult
work that lie ahead in All Fall Down (1962),
Hud (1963) and In Harm’s Way (1965). In what was her third movie but really her
Hollywood breakout, Lynley, who originated her part on Broadway (Atkinson
thought her “honest and winning”), captures every yearning, adventurous nuance
of uncertain adolescence (The New York
Times’ movie guy Bosley Crowther found her “tender and poignant”). Also
brought on board from the Broadway production, 21-year-old Warren Berlinger (who’d
already been in the aforementioned play A
Roomful of Roses and movie Teenage
Rebel and won a Theater World Award for his work in the five-month run of Blue Denim) offers a memorable balance
of comic bravado and heartfelt resignation as de Wilde’s braggadocious buddy,
whose worldliness is a sham but whose personal loyalty is not. Also starring
Macdonald Carey, Marsha Hunt and Vaughn Taylor as parents shaken out of their
humdrum complacencies to really talk to their children, Blue Denimis also
distinguished by its lyrical and intense score by the legendary Bernard
Herrmann, lushly capturing the euphoria, turbulence and intensity of young
love. TT’s hi-def Blu-ray showcases it on an Isolated Music Track, which also
includes several cues not in the finished film. Derived from a recent 4K
restoration, it debuts April 17. Preorders open April 4.